


To Know Nothing (Dirk Gently)

by electricteatime



Series: To Know the Parts of Me By Name [3]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Aftermath of systematic abuse, Anger, Angst, Bad coping mechanisms, Blood, Confusion, Death, Depression, Fear, Gen, Hope, Maladaptive Living, Other, Post-Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Discovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Societal Reintegration, Still a lot of no-goodness, but this time there's some goodness too, learning how to live, very mild allusions to disordered eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 09:18:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14281779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricteatime/pseuds/electricteatime
Summary: Dirk Gently is lacking in almost everything. Direction, purpose, and experience are all things far out of his reach and the closer he looks the more empty the universe seems.He doesn’t have anything now but a tugging in his stomach and an unhealthy amount of blind faith in knowing that he can ride that wave until it drops him.***This is the last in a series of stories looking at the different people Dirk has been in his lifetime, and how they are all a part of him even if he tries to keep them separate.We'll finish with Dirk Gently, a man who is everything and nothing all at once.





	To Know Nothing (Dirk Gently)

**Author's Note:**

> This is Part Three of a series, if you haven't already please read Part One and Part Two first!
> 
> Hi, it's me, crawling out of my shame cave four months after I said I'd post this update to drop it at your doorstep. I have no real reason for this taking so long, other than it fought me every step of the way, is twice the length of the last installment, and I had a lot of anxiety about actually being able to wrap this up with the premise I'd set myself already. It's here though! Finally! And I really hope you like it. 
> 
> As usual, please heed the warnings for this fic, but this one isn't as bad as the others. Hopefully you won't feel so bad at the end. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to the wonderful dont-offend-the-bees, this fic wouldn't exist at all without Hellz basically letting me use them to hold myself accountable and I love you for that. Also a massive thank you to everythingisyouknowwhat who not only read through this and picked out all my grammatical errors (there were many), but also left lovely little notes along the way and nearly made me cry with the kindness of their words.
> 
> For those of you wondering, yes, this is the end! Did it! But fear not, there's going to be at least one more add on fic to this series, two if everything goes to plan, and possibly even some 'deleted scenes' which some of you have asked for if I can find the time and get enough asks to write about. 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking around, and I hope this wraps up the main body of the series sufficiently for you.
> 
> ***  
> This is part of a currently three-but-potentially-five part series which is an all out angst-fest but will hopefully resemble in some way a character study of Dirk Gently.
> 
> We started with Svlad Cjelli, a boy who wears his heart on his sleeve.  
> We picked up with Project Icarus, a defense mechanism that is arguable at best in it's efficiency.  
> And we finish with Dirk Gently, a man who is everything and nothing all at once.

 

_Be afraid of the world and everyone in it, but do not let that stop you._

 

***

 

Dirk Gently had thought the world would be kinder than it turned out to be.

It seems silly to have assumed that in in retrospect, because he remembered from before that people could be cruel, and Blackwing had ensured he’d never forget it, but somehow he’d always thought that the only thing he’d need was freedom and then he’d know how to be happy.

He needs so much more than freedom.

Dirk Gently is lacking in almost everything. Direction, purpose, and experience are all things far out of his reach and the closer he looks the more empty the universe seems. The space between stars is vast and dark and it’s that void that he’s been tossed into, he thinks. Empty and alone. He tells himself he can do it anyway, that’s he’s always been that way. It’s just that when he was contained within four walls the loneliness wasn’t so apparent. The world out here is wide and full and he still can’t find something to hold onto, something to be. It aches inside of him like a tooth left to rot. When it gets too close to a physical hurt he does what he always has, finds himself a thread of hope to stitch himself back up and keeps going. One foot in front of the other, hoping it leads somewhere.

It always leads _somewhere_ , just very rarely to a place he wants to be in.

Dirk Gently doesn’t know how to start becoming one with a world that resists him so strongly, but it’s a world that’s been kept from him for long enough and he will give it everything he has in him if it means he can find a place where he won’t be shut out. He will push forwards endlessly to avoid looking back. He will try anything and everything to make sure he never becomes the person they tried to make him into. He doesn’t have anything now but a tugging in his stomach and an unhealthy amount of blind faith in knowing that he can ride that wave until it drops him.

 

***

 

Functioning alone is hard. His life had been routine, had been following orders and answering questions and that had always been the way of it for years. Every little thing he did had been managed down to the minute. Every what, why and when had been accounted for by someone else, all he had to do was go along with it. He never realised just how difficult it would be to exist outside of that when it’s all he’d ever known.

Getting out of bed without the familiar wake up call is hard. Remembering to eat without someone telling him to is hard. Trying to unlearn ignoring his hunger is hard. Knowing what to do with his day when it isn’t planned out and forced upon him is hard. The first time he realises that he can adjust the temperature of his own shower, he stands under the water (warm, showers can be warm) and cries for a good half hour. It still feels like he’s expecting a punishment for taking so long when he sits on his bed afterwards and waits for someone to tell him to go to sleep. Nobody does, of course, and he stays there until his eyes grow too heavy and he passes out where he’s sitting.

Sometimes he gets paranoid, wondering if it can really be called that when he has reason to be worried. On those days every person he meets is cause for suspicion, everything that happens around him is to be scrutinised and more often than not those are the days he packs up whatever he has with him and leaves, just in case. The paranoia takes other forms, too. Often he finds himself wondering if he needed the pills they’d forced into him, the unknown things he knows they’d injected and dripped through IV lines, if something had been actually wrong with him for him to need them and if now he doesn’t have them it will go drastically wrong. It’s not like he has medical records, not like he exists at all on any record actually, and there’s no way he could go to a doctor. For all he knows, Blackwing had been giving him medication to keep him alive and he wouldn’t find out until it was too late. It’s not the only reason he feels the pull to go back, but it’s the only one he can justify as somewhat rational.

The guilt he feels for having left is something he can’t work out no matter how he tries.

There’s a helplessness to it all of course, to craving freedom but not knowing what to do now he has it. The endless decisions he’s never had to make before, an infinity of choices laid out before him. He’s never had access to his own destiny and sometimes the scope of everything overwhelms him. Not knowing what to do without being told to do it, but knowing there isn’t anyone to tell him never fails to back him into a corner. It’s claustrophobic feeling so small, knowing the three options of peanut butter, strawberry jam or honey to put on his toast are seemingly inconsequential, but the fear of being wrong paralyzes him. The indecision makes it hard to breathe and in that moment the choice feels like life and death, feels as impossible as driving a car to the moon, feels like all he needs is someone to _tell him_ and it will all go away. The way his hands shake over the choice should be laughable but it isn’t, it’s a cruel reminder that he has never had a choice before now, and the ones he’d been given were in experiments that he’d always ended up getting wrong. His choices are always wrong, but now there’s nobody to tell him how to make the right one, nobody to guide him, nobody to punish him when he inevitably chooses something he shouldn’t. In those moments Blackwing doesn’t feel like it had been a prison, it feels like it had been a guiding hand that had steered him through his own mistakes. In those moments he wonders if they’d take him back if he asked. When he feels like he’s drowning over something so simple and he can’t move in case it breaks an unspoken rule, Dirk Gently wonders if he’s designed to be controlled.

 

***

 

The days pass in hazes he doesn’t bother to keep track of. Time had never really been of consequence to him before now and it’s hard to learn how to keep up with it. Instead he just lets himself be pulled along, this way and that, sleeping on park benches and eating when he remembers or when the universe pushes him into it. He’s not very good at keeping on top of things, and somewhere along the way he starts to notice his hunger, starts to notice the way the cold cuts through him. Sleeping anywhere and everywhere is dangerous at the best of times but with the cold drawing in it seems to be getting harder to bear, he’s not dressed for winter and while he sometimes bargains, deals, or even just breaks into places, shelter is hard to come by. It means he has to get creative.

He spends three days in a commune of sorts before he realises they’re trying to get him to join what he’ll later learn can only be described as a cult. They’re fascinated by the way he talks about the universe, but they aren’t exactly friendly. They talk to him with warm voices but treat him like he’s other, and when one of them tells him he’s destined to join them with eyes too wide for his face he feels an uncomfortable prickling sensation up his spine, a warning signal from beyond. He gets out of there as soon as he can.

They’re on the news the next day in a diner where he manages to bribe some tea out of the waitress. A mass shooting, twenty-one dead. He can’t help but think back on the warning sign and wonder if it wasn’t for him after all. Maybe death hasn’t caught up to him yet, but it looks like it’s closing in. He doesn’t want to think about there coming a time when he has to start adding to his body count. If he just keeps moving it might never catch up.

He hopes it never catches up.

 

***

 

Dirk never really settles anywhere. He hops around from place to place and tries not to think too hard about what it’s like to stick around. It’s not a bad way to live, not when he’s spent most of his life so far locked away and longing to see the world, but it’s certainly less glamorous than he’d thought it might be.

He finds himself wandering down a road in the rain at some point. He’s lost track of the days, having stopped counting when he realised it made them go by slower. The hoodie he’d acquired a few weeks back is doing little to keep out the water, and his few remaining possessions are wrapped in a plastic bag, kept in a backpack to keep them dry. Even at this point he doesn’t have much to his name. A couple changes of clothes, a book that gets switched up whenever he sees a swap shop, a squeaky stress toy he doesn’t remember seeing before now. He has a box of granola bars as well, some tea bags, a bundle of cash from working the odd case or that he’d mysteriously found in the street. He also keeps some, well, _things_. Curiosities he’d found and felt drawn to, an odd looking rock that he nearly names a few times just for the company’s sake, a stack of library cards with one for every state he’s been through so far. Arguably he could pack and prepare better, but his haphazard way of doing things seems to be working out just fine for him so far, or it would be if he’d packed a damn umbrella.

It’s times like these he starts to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to ignore all the bad in favour of chasing the pull of freedom when the sun is shining and the world is bright around him, but the hopeless feeling in his chest likes to creep in with the grey weather. He feels better about crying in the rain where nobody can see it, where he can pretend he isn’t doing that at all. He has no reason to cry, not when it could be worse, not when he knows how bad it can get. The problem is he feels is cold, wet, hungry, and tired which is by all accounts a miserable combination. It’s been weeks since his last case, money is running out for him and he can feel that something is going to happen, he just doesn’t know what. He wishes he at least knew if it was good or bad. It scares him sometimes, the possibilities.

Dirk walks for nearly an hour before he stops and sits down on the hard shoulder. It’s not a road made for walking on, and he doesn’t even know where he’s going, but there’s no shelter for miles that he can see and the rain isn’t stopping. If anything it seems to be getting worse as night creeps in, and he may as well take some rest for a minute if he’s going to keep going. He wanted to be somewhere safe before it got dark. He hates the dark, particularly when he’s outside and alone. There’s no way to see the stars here, and he knows really that nowhere is safe but he wants four walls so badly. He tries not to think about why the familiarity of being boxed in makes him feel safe rather than scared when the outside world starts to feel daunting.

The sound of a car approaching pulls him out of his own head. There hasn’t been much traffic on the road so far and what there has been has ignored him, so he’s surprised to find the vehicle slowing down as it gets closer. It makes him wary and he stands, tightening his hold on his backpack just in case he has to start running, not that there’s anywhere to go except into the woods and he’s not sure that’s a good idea. Like most things, he realises suddenly, he did not plan this out very well.

Eventually the car stops. It’s an older model, and the woman inside has to lean across the passenger seat to roll the window down.

“You know,” she calls, and Dirk can see that she’s older than he’d assumed at first glance, maybe mid-sixties. “You’re not supposed to be out here on foot.” Her voice is strong but gentle, the kind that’s good at giving orders but also reading bedtime stories.

Dirk falters, shrugging and scuffing his shoe against the dirt. He’s still tensed, and he feels like it must make him look guilty, shifty even. He doesn’t realise it makes him look young and scared. The woman sees it though, casting a concerned eye over him.

“Where are you going, kid?” her voice has shifted into comforting territory now, and it’s a tone he hasn’t heard in a long time. Enough to make him look up at her.

“I don’t know,” he admits after a moment. “I’m just… going.” It’s a non-answer, and he’s half convinced she’s going to roll her eyes at him and drive away.

“You want a ride?” his mouth falls open but he doesn’t reply, she seems to sense his hesitancy. “I’m heading down to the coast, but I’m not in any rush. Got nowhere in particular to be and all the time in the world to get there, so if you promise you’re not a hitchhiking murderer I’d be glad for the company.”

Her smile is soft and the rain is heavy. Night is starting to set in. Dirk closes his mouth and nods, unwrapping the arm he had secured around his middle to reach for the door handle.

It’s kindness, he thinks. That’s what’s making him feel warm. That and the fact the car has it’s heating on, and he doesn’t think he’s ever been more grateful for anything in his life.

“British,” she tilts her head inquiringly. “You’re a long way from home,” Dirk’s shoulders raise back up, defensive and cagey as he looks at her, wondering if maybe this wasn’t the best idea. She seems to sense that he’s uncomfortable, shaking her head to clear the question away. “Name’s Maggie,” she says, offering him a hand which he lets hang for a beat too long before shaking it.

“I-” he doesn’t know if he should give her his name or not, doesn’t know if she’s safe. But it would be nice to hear it more often, a reminder that he’s not what the things in his head try to tell him he is anymore. “Dirk. My name is Dirk.”

“Nice to meet you, Dirk,” she smiles, sunny in contrast to the rain outside and washing away the tense atmosphere like it was never there. “You hungry?” The look on his face must give him away because she just laughs and tilts her head towards the backseat. “I’ve been stockpiling, you’ll find all sorts back there. Take as much as you like, I can spare it.”

It’s not polite to just take from her, he knows that, but _god_ if he wasn’t hungry before he is now he knows there’s food nearby. He doesn’t think Maggie will hold it against him. His hesitancy keeps up right until he opens the bag and sees how much food she actually has, eyes going wide as he digs through and picks out anything that takes his interest.

Food is something he never grows tired of. No matter how much he has, there’s always more. New things he’s hasn’t tried, things he’s never heard of, tastes he wants to taste even if they’re disgusting. He loves the variation, sharpness and softness, the bite of something sour against the delight of something sweet. Explosions of spice, salty and savoury. The richness of so many flavours at once. There’s nothing quite as exciting as eating, not now he can try everything. He wants to try everything. Sweet things in particular. He loves how they taste; the complete opposite of whatever they’d called food at Blackwing. It’s hardly a surprise that most of what he’s picked out can be placed at least somewhere in the dessert category.

There’s a clear absence of chocolate.

“Sweet tooth, huh?” he jumps, almost having forgotten that he’s not alone, and Maggie shakes her head when he looks guilty with it. “I got two boys, I’m guessing older than you. I’d make cake and they’d eat the whole thing by morning. When they were little I used to have to put anything that had even an ounce of sugar up on the top shelf and they’d _still_ find a way to get to it. Never did work out how they did that.”

She sounds wistful, and it’s enough to catch Dirk’s interest, pausing in his eating to ask, “why aren’t they with you?” It doesn’t occur to him that it’s an invasive question.

“Well, they’re all grown up and gone now. Older one’s getting married, younger just went off to college. Just me and my husband left in that house, I figured it was time I had some fun.” She says it easily enough, but there’s a tightness to her words that he recognises, wonders if that’s something she can see on him too. Still, his curiosity persists, even if he is reserved at the moment.

“What about him? Your husband, I mean. Didn’t he want to come?” he watches the way her shoulders tense before relaxing back out, she holds her head a little higher and keeps her gaze firmly on the road. It tells him a lot, even if he’s not quite sure what that is.

“When Charlie left for college it was just us. We were twenty when we married, forty three years I was with him,” she shakes her head. “I felt every single one of them. Told him when the kids were gone it was _my_ time, said I wanted to live some for myself. He said I wouldn’t dare, wasn’t brave enough,” she shrugs, like she thinks it might have been true. “Charlie left one night, the next night I packed up my bags and told him to watch me.” Dirk watches her profile, the shadow on her face that tells him there’s more to the story than what she’s saying. “Sometimes… Sometimes it’s enough. Sometimes you’ve just gotta say enough.”

He looks back down to his lap, thinking the words over and picking nervously at his slightly squashed doughnut. “Was it… easy?” he asks, softer than he means to, giving too much away. He doesn’t look over when he feels her eyes linger on him.

“Nothing worth doing ever is,” her voice is soft, reassuring. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it anyway. Even if it is a good twenty years after you should have.” He smiles at that, barely there, but the first real reason he’s had to in a while.

“Better late than never, I suppose,” he offers. She laughs, stealing a cookie from his hoard.

“Curious little thing, aren’t you? Nosey,” he’s aware she’s teasing him, but it doesn’t stop the blush rising to his face.

“I’m a detective,” he tells her, perhaps a little haughty. It doesn’t take much for him to frown at himself though, “well. I’m trying to be a detective. I solve cases, I haven’t actually got a license. I am good at it though, well. Sort of good. Well, effective at least. I always get an answer, even if I go about it in a _really_ convoluted sort of way sometimes. I suppose I’m… training to be a detective? Not with the police though, or with any other detective-y like people come to think of it. I’m mostly just making it up as I go. It works though!” It’s the most he’s said in a long time, certainly the most he’s said to Maggie who looks both surprised and amused by his outpouring of words. He immediately shoves the remains of his sandwich into his mouth to stop himself from saying anything else. Sometimes when he starts thinking he forgets everything else, and it all just pours out of him without any way to control it.

“You don’t seem like the type to want to go into law enforcement,” she muses, and he’s quick to correct that assumption.

“Oh, I’m not! I don’t really care about laws or enforcing things. I just want to… help. I suppose. I’m quite good at finding things.” Her expression softens into something more understanding, something he’d think of as maternal if he knew how to recognise it.

“If I ever lose something, you’ll be the first person I call,” she promises.

This time his smile is shy and kept to himself, but when he looks out of the window he can’t help but feel a little more hopeful.

 

***

 

They’ve been driving for some time now, through the first day and the next, well after the sun had crept down over the horizon and the moon had taken its place. Wherever they are it all looks the same, fields and dust and nothingness for as far as the eye can see. Dirk is watching the stars out of the window, wondering if he’ll ever grow tired of seeing the sky, worrying that there may come a time he can’t all over again. Nothing seems to last long, so he’s working on enjoying the good things while he has them, working on not getting too attached when he knows he’ll have to let them go or have them ripped from him. It’s an unjust kind of peace, but some days it works.

Maggie has been quiet today, seemingly sensing his melancholy mood and letting the radio fill the space between them, but the signal had been so bad when they got out in the middle of nowhere she’d turned it off. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, but it is heavy and he chances a glance over at her before he speaks.

“What do you think makes someone a person?” he asks, in a way that suggests he doesn’t necessarily need an answer even if he’d like one. She takes her eyes off the road to glance over at him for a moment and that look is there again, like she can’t quite work him out, like she doesn’t mind that at all. It’s almost comforting.

“Well, I suppose that depends who you ask,” it’s not the answer he’s hoping for and he’s willing to leave it at that but she continues. “Do you mean what makes you human, or what makes you who you are?”

“I-” the distinction makes him frown, furrowing his brow. “Who you are,” he clarifies after a moment. “What makes you, _you_?” it sounds like a stupid question as soon as he’s said it but he doesn’t take it back, mostly because Maggie is watching the road with a pensive expression.

“Who you are is who you decide to be,” comes her answer. It’s decisive, thoughtful, and Dirk nods, watching her speak. “I’m a mother, I’m a baker, I play a mean game of poker,” she throws him a wink that he’s not sure what to do with. “I found out a few months ago that I’m brave, and _apparently_ I’m the kind of person who picks up strange boys at the side of the road. You’re always learning new things about yourself, even at my age, but you get to choose what defines you and what doesn’t. For some people it’s their family, where they come from, what they do with their lives. Other people think more of what they want to be, what they hope for. I guess what it all comes down to is what you _want_ to be. You can make yourself into that person if you try,” she’s soft when she turns back to him, their eyes meeting briefly and he can see that even if she doesn’t know where he’s come from, she knows it wasn’t good. “You don’t have to be what’s happened to you. You can be whoever you like.”

He’s the one to drop the eye contact first, looking down at his lap and fidgeting with his fingers. She doesn’t push him though, and he’s thankful for that. Of all the people he’s ever men, this one, he thinks, is going to be hard to let go of. “I don’t know anything about who I am,” it’s a heavy admission and he wants to swallow it back down as soon as he’s said it.

“Sure you do,” he’s interrupted before he can take it back. “What’s your name?” the look Dirk gives her is hesitant but open.

“Dirk Gently, but that’s not _me_. That’s just,” he waves his arms around a little, “a name.”

“Okay Dirk Gently, if someone told you they had a surprise for you would you want it now or later?”

“Now, I suppose,” he decides after a moment’s hesitation. The smile he gets from her is teasing.

“So you’re impatient,” it’s good natured but he still feels himself flush a little.

“No! I just- now is good. I wouldn’t have to think too much about it then, it could just happen,” he defends.

“Ah, so you’re impulsive,” that one is harder to argue with and he shrugs, it’s as close to agreement as she’ll get from him. “If you spent all day building a sand castle and somebody knocked it down, what would you do?”

It’s a harder one to think about, considering he’s never done anything of the sort but he tries to picture it. “I would be upset,” he tells her thoughtfully. “I would build another one.”

“What about the person who knocked it down? What would you do to them?”

“I-” he supposes there are a lot of actions that he could take, and the variety of choices threatens once again to overwhelm him but he swallows it down, it’s not even a real choice. “I might- I might shout at them a bit? But not a lot. I would ask them why they did it. Maybe they were having a bad day. Maybe someone told them to. Oh! Maybe it was _destiny_ , maybe their only purpose in life was to destroy sand castles and if I _stopped_ them then it would have a ripple effect across the whole world. The universe, even! I can’t stop them if that’s what they were always meant to do, maybe I’d even have to help them! Maybe we’d have to knock down every sand castle in the world, and only then could we be sure that we’d knocked down the right one.”

Maggie is laughing, but it’s not cruel, not _at_ him per se. Instead she sounds delighted, though he still bites his lip against his own smile as he looks away, caught out. “You have quite an imagination, huh?” she asks, laughter trailing in her voice. “So. Impatient, impulsive, persistent, considerate, helpful, creative, kind. You’re not quick to anger and you think the best of people. That’s not exactly a bad list of traits,” the smile she gives him is kind, warm and he returns his own even if it’s a little more shy.

“I suppose not.” He lets the words settle into him. There’s nothing there that seems bad, even though he knows for a fact he has bad traits too. Right now he’ll let himself focus on the positive. “I think… I think mostly I just want to be good.”

Maggie’s smile softens and she reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. “I think you’ll manage that just fine,” she promises.

Dirk goes back to staring out the window, trying to commit everything about the lightness in his chest to memory and telling himself the stars have always looked that blurry.

 

***

 

Like all good things, it doesn’t last.

Maggie keeps talking about the coast. About how much she’s always wanted to see the ocean but she’s never had the chance, about how trapped it had made her feel to look at the same walls, same roads, same patch of sky all her life. If he knew at all how to reach out to her he thinks he could trust her to understand him.

She seems to understand anyway, at least a little. She never presses for more when he ventures to answer her, fills the silence when it’s clear it makes him feel awkward, knows when to pull over if he’s starting to feel panicky, because a box is still a box even if it’s moving and he can’t stomach it sometimes. The one time he wakes up from a nightmare, silent but with tears streaming down his cheeks, she hands him a bottle of water and a cookie and says no more about it. He catches her looking though, out of the corner of her eye every now and then. There’s curiosity there, but also concern and sometimes she opens her mouth as if to ask a question before shaking it away. None of it is anything he knows how to deal with, so mostly he ignores it, but sometimes the soft way she looks at him has him blinking tears away.

She hasn’t made any move to suggest he leave, apparently content to look after him as unobtrusively as possible as they drive. It’s been five days, and Dirk is starting to feel fidgety in a way that he knows means this won’t last much longer no matter how much he wants it to. He feels safe here, safer at least than he has in a while. Something about the way Maggie treats him makes him feel human. She doesn’t seem to want anything from him that he isn’t prepared to offer, and even with his freedom that’s something he gets very little of. It’s not the first time he’s hated the warning signs of fate, but it’s one of the only times he’s tried to actively push them away.

Something is coming though, whether he likes it or not. He’s a time bomb, and the closer he stays to Maggie the more likely she is to be caught in the blast when it goes off. Dirk doesn’t want to be responsible for that.

He also can’t bring himself to say goodbye.

It’s a cowardly move, and he knows it, but he’s coming dangerously close to spilling all his secrets to the first stranger who offered him kindness with no expectation he return it, and that’s not something he can afford. It’s in the past, he has to leave it in the past because if he lets himself feel that again he’ll never break away from it the way he wants to. Shoving it down is easier, if he doesn’t feel it he doesn’t have to deal with it, he can try to rationalise it. The pain he carries from his past selves isn’t something he needs right now, not when the world is teaching him new ways to hurt. It doesn’t stop him from wanting to spill it all though, from having to bite the words back behind his teeth, swallow them down and clamp his lips together to keep everything from overflowing out of him. He doesn’t know if she’d believe a word of it anyway, if anyone would. He’s starting to learn that a lot of the things he’d considered to be normal life experiences aren’t anywhere in the realm of normal at all, but he’s still trying to work out which ones are universal so he can have some way to make a connection with others. When he starts wondering if she’d hold him if he told her those secrets, he knows it’s time to go.

“You’re getting jittery,” she says, pulling him out of his head, and all he can think about is that she noticed. It would be different in any other circumstance, if not for the confines of the car he doesn’t think she would have noticed at all, but they’re here and she did and it’s too much all of a sudden, the fear of being seen too deeply before he has time to construct a wall to hide behind clawing its way up his throat. He may not be what he was, but he still doesn’t know how to live without defenses, he just hadn’t realised he’d need them until now. “We need to make a stop for gas anyway, it’d do some good to get out of here for a bit,” he nods dumbly in response, and like always she doesn’t push him.

It only takes them another half hour to come across a gas station. It’s a well populated area, they’ve been fighting traffic all the way down and Dirk knows the universe has done this on purpose. It’ll be an easy getaway.

He waits until she’s filled up the tank, watches as she goes to pay, browsing the snacks as she stands in line. Dirk can feel it all through his body, the need to move, the call to go, but he pauses for a moment to give himself time to scribble a note on the back of a receipt.

 ** _Thank you._ ** He writes, following up with a more hesitant. _**I’m sorry.**_ Because the guilt is starting to turn his stomach, and he has to go now before he lets it root him to the spot. Something is coming, he has to put distance between them while he can.

As soon as Maggie turns away from the window to pay at the counter, he grabs his bag, flings the car door open, and runs.

This time the crushing weight of loneliness is almost too much to breathe through.

This time he lets himself cry.

 

***

 

Death catches up to him eventually, the way he’d always known it would.

He’s working a case for a local baker experiencing a string of bizarre and unexplainable thefts when it happens, having been unable to turn down the offer of free pastries and tea for as long as he wants them. It had involved an awful lot of following people around to try and work out who had been stealing the supplies, and how exactly they’d done it. It hadn’t involved a lot of guns. Not until now, anyway.

He watches as the man he’d been tracking through the warehouse is suddenly flung forwards with the force of the bullets slamming into his back, hears the choked off cry of surprise as he falls to the floor. There’s blood already pouring out of him by the time Dirk reaches him, wide and panicked as he presses his hands over the most obvious wounds.

“What do I do? Shit, _shit_ , what am I supposed to do?” he’s panicking, useless, he tells himself. This is useless. He has two hands and there are five bullet holes, it was never going to be enough, but even so it startles him just how quickly the life drains out of the man who, struggling to breathe, grabs at his jacket with blood covered hands and pulls him in.

“River- you need to-” it seems to be all he can get out, and if anything it makes Dirk panic even more but it’s no good, his eyes slip closed and his hands slip from their hold on his jacket.

“No, no no no, you need to stay awake. Just-” he’s not breathing. He’s not breathing and Dirk is left shaking, wide-eyed and covered in blood, frozen in place with the shock of it before snapping back to himself and scrambling away from the body. He moves until his back hits the wall, sliding down it and staring at the man, at his own hands covered in his blood. Dirk can’t breathe suddenly, chest tightening like someone has clamped a metal band around his lungs and no matter how he gasps for breath it doesn’t seem to come. Eventually he thinks he might pass out but he ends up just throwing up, dizzy and sick with it all. The man’s body is cooling just a few feet away, and he can’t bring himself to look back at him. It’s too much. The memory of gunshots and laughter flashes through his head before he can stop it, and it’s enough to make him throw up again. He doesn’t understand how anyone could find joy in something like this, wonders briefly if that makes him weak.

It takes a good twenty minutes before he feels steady enough to push himself to his feet and go and find help. Not that help will do much good now. By the time he’s finished giving his statement he has just enough energy left to go back to his motel and shower before collapsing into sleep.

When he wakes up the next morning he wants to stay in bed. He feels hollowed out in the worst kind of way, and despite the fact that he scrubbed at his hands so hard they’re still red and raw hours later, he knows there’s still blood under his nails. A stranger's blood. A stranger he’d followed into a warehouse and had gotten killed in the process. Jason, they’d told him his name was, and he’d been shot by the other members of the crew behind the heist to keep him quiet. Because they knew he was being tailed. Because Dirk was tailing him.

Knowing it was going to come around hadn’t made him any more prepared for literally having blood on his hands for the first time. All the other people he’s gotten hurt are bad, awful really, but he hadn’t ever seen it like that before. Hadn’t felt it, the way life can slip from a person. The whole experience has left him cold.

Despite what he wants he can’t ignore the insistence of the universe’s will for too long, and eventually he has to drag himself out from under the covers and into another shower. He wants to scrub the death from his body, but he knows it’ll stick to him. He’s tried and failed to wash away too much under a steady stream of water to believe it will work this time.

The universe always gets what it wants, even if it has to take it by force.

River ends up being a person and not a place, and once Dirk has worked that out there isn’t much left to do other than track him down, which is easy enough when he stops putting up a fight and lets himself be guided along in the right direction. River had been stealing the supplies to try and monopolise the city with multiple branches of his own failing business. He’d hit multiple bakeries in the area with a team of people who’d been intent on doing the same for a share of the profits when they started rolling in. Once it’s all come together and he’s laid it out to the police so they can make the relevant arrests, Dirk stares at the piles and piles of baking supplies they’d caught him with and wonders if all of this had been worth losing a life over.

He’s solved the case. He has free pastries for the rest of his life and the eternal gratitude of the baking community. It feels like a hollow victory.

He doesn’t go to the funeral.

 

***

 

Death doesn’t stop coming once it’s caught him, and Dirk starts to think he may well drown in bodies before he comes to be any actual help to anyone.

He’s starting to get used to it, even if he finds it no less terrible than before, but he notices the pattern that once he turns up people start dropping dead for various reasons. It weighs on him. Sometimes death overtakes him and gets there first. When it starts with a body more tend to follow, and even if they don’t people get hurt. He has a blast radius, he thinks. Like a bomb. When the universe drops him somewhere everyone in the immediate vicinity is at risk, and the closer they are to him the more deadly those results are likely to be.

Even when he tries to warn people they don’t listen.

He sees too many people die after laughing at him for saying they will, but he can’t bring himself to stop _trying_ to warn them at least. Or doing everything he can to prevent it. Or clasping their cooling hands as the life drains from them and telling them he’s sorry. He had started out promising them that it would be okay, but eventually he couldn’t stomach the lie of constantly reassuring someone who’s seconds away from death, of pretending he’s a comfort rather than a cause.

This must have been what Blackwing had been trying to keep him from. They must have known somehow that he was dangerous, that he’d get people killed. It wasn’t his safety they were worried about. When he gets hurt it feels well deserved. He’s never the one to die which feels unfair, but he can stomach the pain if it means he gets some indication that he’s being punished, that he’s not just getting away with this.

He wants so desperately to help people, and often he ends up doing that, but it always seems to come with a cost that nobody agreed to pay. Dirk thinks that might be why nobody sticks around. Even the people who seem to like him will hold him at a certain kind of distance, will leave once his usefulness to them dries up. He thinks they can just sense it on him like a giant yellow warning sign pointing out the danger. It makes him feel bad for wishing just one of them would stay, but the emptiness of watching someone else walk away time after time, of meeting someone new and knowing they’ll turn away eventually is just too much.

He doesn't cry, not even when he’s alone, he refuses to. Maybe he just can't anymore, he's not sure, but he sees people together everywhere he looks. Children and parents and friends and lovers and families. There's a yearning inside of him that he tries to ignore. He's the piece that doesn't fit, he knows that. He wouldn't ever be able to leave the life he lives, the universe wouldn't let him, but it has to be that way because nobody with a choice would choose this life. Nobody with a choice would choose him. It hurts, an aching space in his chest so big he wonders how he doesn't disappear entirely, consumed by a black hole of loneliness that swallows every token of affection that’s tossed his way, but isn’t strong enough to pull anyone close.

He can't do anything about it though, he has to play the cards he's been dealt. Sometimes, late at night, he thinks about his parents, thinks about what _he_ had said about mistakes, and remembers it's for the best that nobody gets too close. He should be actively discouraging it. He's been his own company for long enough that surely he can carry on doing it, but he's like a ghost, passing through and familiar to nobody. A story, ephemeral, he wonders sometimes if he’s actually real. He wonders what it feels like to have someone know you. What it sounds like to hear your name in a voice that doesn't hate the shape of it on their tongue. What it feels like to be held close, a hand in yours, an anchor point. What it feels like to be asked if you're okay by someone you can say no to. By someone who wants to know the answer. By someone who cares when you're not.

It's selfish and he hates himself for it, but god does he want to know what that's like.

 

***

 

It doesn’t get much better in England.

After a few years solving cases in America he finally makes contact with enough of the right kinds of people to get fake papers drawn up. The thing about working cases as a detective separate from the police is that the bad guys want work done, too. Dirk isn’t really in a position to argue when the universe says he should, and frankly they pay better than anyone else. It gains him a list of somewhat questionable contacts who will hand him a begrudging favour every now and then.

He ends up with a passport, a birth certificate, and a driving license, all with his chosen name and a fake date of birth. He forgot his own a long time ago and it wasn’t like he was going to celebrate, but it was required for the documentation so he’d picked a summer month, reasoning that the weather was nicer. It’s enough to allow him to open a bank account, something which certainly makes being paid easier when he solves a case regarding a missing two million dollars which had been somewhat dubiously acquired, Dirk has long since stopped worrying about the particulars of morals as long as nobody dies in the process, and they pay him way above what his usual rate is. Not that he really _has_ a usual rate, but if he did they would have paid him at least ten times that amount. Closer to sixty times, actually. It’s enough that he stares at the balance for a very long time and has to reign himself in from going on a shopping trip _immediately_. He does however allow himself to buy one thing, having spotted a jacket in the brightest, most sunny shade of yellow he’d ever seen on an item of clothing in a shop window a week before. It’s expensive, ludicrously so, but just putting it on makes him feel better, more like a person he wants to be than any of the people he’s been, and paired with his new documentation it feels like the first step in the right direction towards working out who Dirk Gently actually is. He considers it a reward for solving his first big case, but despite how much he wants to he doesn’t buy himself an entire new wardrobe, or the equally brightly coloured car he spots on his way back.

Instead he takes it as a signal to go. He’s been being tugged to England for some time now, Cambridge specifically, and while it’s likely going to be unpleasant given that’s just the way these things go he can’t help but be excited. It’s an adventure, a real one, something new. England feels a world away from Blackwing, who he’s pretty sure has at least some idea where he is. And from Project Incubus, who have rebranded themselves as The Rowdy 3 despite their number and _definitely_ know where he is if the amount of times they’ve burst in on him is anything to go by. It feels like surely neither of them can get to him in another country, at least not for a while. Across the ocean seems like a decent amount of breathing space.

When he gets on the plane he’s more excited than he’s ever been in his life.

 

***

 

Cambridge is huge. It’s academic, and fancy, and so god-awfully _boring_ Dirk doesn’t have the first clue how he’s going to last here.

It’s good though, in some ways. He meets interesting people, some easier to get along with than others, but they are all physically stuck with him in this space and it’s the closest he’s ever come to having people he could consider friends. Dirk never really escapes the aura that surrounds him of being, at the very least, slightly odd, but here he can borrow cigarettes from other slightly odd people and smoke with them while they complain about the weather. It’s nice. It’s as close to normal as he think he’s ever managed to be.

Classes aren’t half bad either, or they wouldn’t be if he could focus on them properly. It had only really made sense to him to elect to study the universe, maybe gaining some background knowledge would help him figure out everything that goes on around him and possibly even exercise a modicum of control over it. Astronomy degrees require a lot of work though, and while he tries to throw himself into it the distractions are just as plentiful here as they had been in America, and if nothing else the alcohol is stronger. Despite everything he gets by okay, probably because a lot of his tutors are just as invested in wild and unreasonable theories about the universe as he is, and while not many people want to talk to him on a personal level he gains a bit of a reputation in class for being someone who will throw out the most ridiculous sounding theory there is, only for it to be found to be plausible after all.

Unfortunately, turning out to be right in other ways is the worst thing that could have happened to him.

It’s paranoia more than anything that makes him tell people off the bat that he’s not psychic whenever they bring up something being strange about him. A defense mechanism that somehow turns into a rumour, that turns into a way to make some amount of money, that turns into a small scam, that turns into a big scam, that turns out not to be a scam at all when he correctly predicts every single question for one of the end of year exams in his sleep down to the letter.

All in all he makes about six thousand pounds.

He also loses his place at Cambridge.

It’s something he thinks he should have seen coming in retrospect. A creeping sense of dread had been building in him for some time and he’d put it down to the fact that exams were coming up and he hadn’t studied one bit. He should have known that the universe would come knocking sooner or later, he’d gotten too comfortable with his situation and it had never liked him comfortable.

It hurts being dragged away from the only place he’d felt some kind of security since he’d broken free, like something picking at the thread he’d hastily patched himself up with and starting to unravel him the further away he gets. It’s just a reinforcement of a lesson he learned long ago, that there’s nothing that can’t be taken away, but somehow this time it hits home harder. Maybe because this one felt different.

Maybe because this time he’d been following what the universe wanted, and it still took away the one thing he wanted to keep.

Maybe because he’s starting to feel like the universe will keep picking him up in the wave of a storm, showing him the lighthouse so he thinks he’s safe, and then crashing him into the rocks at the shore over and over until he’s swept out to sea again before he can even feel the dry land.

 

***

 

When he gets somewhere far away and close enough to the middle of nowhere that he won’t be overheard, he throws himself out of the car before it even comes to a complete stop and screams at the sky.

He screams and screams and curses and screams some more. Presses his hands over his ears to try and block out the droning of creation even though he knows it won’t work, because it’s in his head, it’s a part of him, some days it’s all he is. He tugs at his hair and throws the rocks at his feet as far as he can into the distance, as if hurling them at nothingness will hurt it. He wants to hurt it, reality, creation, all of it. He wants to make it feel, wants to make it care. If it’s going to make itself all he has it could at least take care of him.

“Why do you keep doing this?!” he all but screams it at the sky, but in response there’s nothing. Of course there’s nothing, he doesn’t get answers.

“Why me? You won’t even tell me what I’m supposed to do! You can’t-” he’s going crazy. He must be. There’s no other way to explain why he’s yelling at nothing. At everything? He doesn’t even know anymore. All he knows is his eyes are red with tears and his heart is too heavy to breathe past. Every part of him aches with a need to mean something, to be something. Loved, he thinks. Or at least recognised. Acknowledged. Believed.

He’s meant to be part of a whole, that’s what it means to be Holistic, to see the whole picture and not just the parts. Maybe he was only ever designed to look at the picture, maybe he wasn’t ever supposed to be in it. Maybe that’s why he can’t find his place, because he doesn’t have one.

It’s a terrifyingly lonely thought.

Nobody and nothing in all of the universe cares that Dirk Gently is and always has been lost and afraid, blindly stumbling around in the dark after a spark of light he’s not sure he even saw in the first place. Not even creation itself.

He has to be the one to care.

The world is cruel, he has learned. It is cold and violent and unforgiving, but as he pulls himself to his feet, he decides that he won't be. He refuses. No matter what it throws at him he will not let it wear him down into something less than decent. He will be a puppet for the universe if that’s all he has, but he will not be its weapon. The only way to prove he's not a monster is to be kind, to be good, to be something capable of love even if he is never shown any in return. He might not be able to be loved, but he will give it all the same. It’s too much to let anyone else feel like this. Too much to know the pain of it and not try to be someone who eases that pain in others. He has to do what he always wished someone would do for him. Reaching out even if nobody reaches back. Gently, he tells the universe, as if he can defy what it has tried to make him with nothing but his name. Treat me as you will, but I choose to treat you gently.

He turns away from the expanse of nothing laid out in front of him and makes his way back to the car, wiping the tears from his face as he goes. He can do this. He can keep going.

He has to hope that being lost also means being found one day.

 

***

 

Not much changes in the years that follow.

If anything it gets worse.

He takes case after case after case, there isn’t really anything voluntary about it because he’s found that attempting to refuse just gets him dragged into it one way or another. The universe will take him kicking and screaming if it has to, but it _will_ take him. It’s exhausting.

Eventually he has to give into it. The universe isn’t too keen on rewarding him for anything, but it will keep his head above water if he lets himself be swept up in its current. Closing his eyes and hoping for the best is the only way he’s found to make it more bearable, but even then it often feels like he's drowning. There’s nobody to beg out here, nobody to convince or bargain with. It’s not like it was in Blackwing where everything was contained and repetitive. At least there he knew the rules, knew what was likely to come next even if he didn’t know exactly what, had no control but could pretend he did. There were limits.

Out here it’s raw, stripped bare, ugly and unpredictable. Anything is possible, even the entirely unfathomable, when you’re being tossed into the wounds of reality and tasked with doing something about it. The things that happen in those spaces are unexplainable, they are tears that shouldn't exist in the first place and the situations he often ends up operating in are full of everything that, by all known laws of reality, cannot and should not happen. They do happen though, stretching the limits of the human imagination well past breaking point. He bears witness to every single ugly, twisted thing that it can conjure up, sometimes staring it in the eye, held from backing down only by a loose thread of curiosity and the knowledge that if he does, something will go terribly, terribly wrong.

But that’s his life. Bouncing around and trying to fix things, meeting people in just enough time to help them before they say goodbye - if they’re lucky. If they aren’t then he sticks around just long enough to ruin their lives, too. He smiles as much as he can and tries to ignore his own loneliness, his own fear. He wants to do what’s best, wants to be as good as possible, hopes that with enough good deeds to his name he can at least balance out the bad weighed against it. Ignoring everything he doesn’t know how to deal with seems like the best possible way to go.

Some things won’t be ignored, though. The nightmares, even though he keeps them silent and never wakes up screaming, rage inside his head and keep him from sleep. A play by play of the worst parts of his life so far, things that seem terrifyingly close to predictions of the future that he hopes to god never come true. His heart is always racing when he finally wakes from them, breath coming in a little too fast and tears on his cheeks when he slams his hand over his mouth to keep from choking out any sound. It’s a leftover habit he’s not sure he’ll ever manage to shake, even with the absence of punishment. He can usually pull himself into a semblance of normal in little more than a few minutes at most, slamming it all back down and away into a box he doesn’t want to touch.

He can’t ignore the thoughts either. The invasive ones that ask what he even is, if he has a point, if he’s even human. Sometimes he wonders if he can even die. He’s come close to death so many times and escaped with his life in impossible ways, and Dirk knows he isn’t lucky. Luck isn’t what’s keeping him safe. He supposes it’s practicality rather than anything else. If the universe breaks one of it’s toys it will have to wait around to make a new one, as long as he’s functional he can be used. Sometimes, when it gets really bad, he wonders if he would even be able to kill himself without the universe stepping in. He tries not to think about that, it’s a lot already to know he has no control over his own life, the thought that he may lack the ability to control even his own death is too much by far.

Dirk Gently is tired. Dirk Gently is lonely. Dirk Gently watches the sun rise and shuts his eyes to its light, praying for just one moment of peace.

He doesn’t want to do this anymore.

 

***

 

Sometimes in the moments between push and pull he closes his eyes and reaches out to the call of the guide inside his head.

There's a tension to the universe and he feels it everywhere

A vast nothing, an endless everything, stretching on and on and on forever and calling, always calling his name. Whispering and screaming and demanding and pleading and he's helpless in the face of it all, reaching out and falling forwards trying to find the source. He sees threads and points like pins on a map covering all of time and space stretching far beyond his reach and it all connects, all ties in together he knows it does, knows it should, knows he can make it he just doesn't know how. His head aches and he can only stare when he's taken over by something other than himself. Perhaps he's just a vessel for a higher purpose, a pawn in a game of celestial chess, but he's the one who sees all the pieces, who can feel which ones need to be moved and where to even if he can’t see the board. He can feel in his gut which will be sacrificed for the wider game at play. But he isn't in control, he can move the pieces but only where he's told and when he tries to dig in his heels he realises that he's a piece to be moved too. Endlessly being pushed into pushing others. The first domino of fate waiting for chance to tip him into motion and take the rest of the world down with him. He only hopes the picture it creates when everything falls down is worth it.

The call to go back to America comes just when he’s staring down the endless enormity of it all and starting to think about throwing it in entirely.

Dirk Gently finds himself standing on a cliff edge, he just has to decide which direction he’s going to jump.

 

***

 

Coming back to America feels like accepting his fate.

There’s no real joy when he lands, he’s weary when he steps off the plane. This is not new, he’s done this before, and all he can think is how he’s coming back to nothing. He’s sure he’s in more danger here than he was in England, but he’d never felt safe there either and he’s grown used to the permanent feeling of danger, he’s accepted the way he always feels unsafe. He’s starting to accept a lot of things these days.

Like the repetitive way his life cycles him through one lonely place to the next. Like the way it’s getting easier to let himself be dragged into things. Like the way he doesn’t even know what he’s doing here.

Astonishingly, he gets an answer to that.

He books himself into a hotel, using near to the last of his money to do so, because it’s clear that the universe wants him to stay there and he’s hoping so much that being here and doing what it wants means he’ll be provided for. Money is something else that’s inconsistent for him, and despite picking up payments for detective jobs here and there, and maybe getting his hands on some in less honest ways, he’s never really had enough to be throwing around when he doesn’t know when he’s next going to be left without. Like most other things in his life, it’s unstable and exhausting.

There’s nothing strange about this situation though, not really. That is until somebody knocks on his door.

He’s hesitant to open it, because there’s a Do Not Disturb sign hung on the door and he knows the staff would announce themselves first. There’s nothing he can do if it is Blackwing though, or someone else who wants to cause him harm, and opening the door feels like the right thing to do. Dirk only realises he’s been staring, frozen in place, when the knock comes again and he’s pulled into action. The steps he takes are measured and careful, like he has to convince himself to take every single one of them, and eventually he gets his hand around the handle and braces himself before opening it.

There’s a woman, standing with her hand raised ready to knock again, and looking quite serious but also a little apprehensive.

“Hello?” he tries not to sound too worried as she looks him up and down. There’s something assessing about her and she relaxes her shoulders just a little in a way he recognises as her deeming him unlikely to be a threat. The fact she’d assessed that at all has him tightening his hold on the door, even though it wouldn’t do anything if she did turn out to be military.

“Are you Dirk Gently?” she asks, like she wants him to say yes but she’ll be confused if he does.

“...Yes?” he’s as confused as she is and it shows. It makes him feel more at ease that she clearly doesn’t know what’s happening any more than he does. Still, when she blinks at him like his answer is bordering on impossible, or at least very improbable, he feels a little insulted.

“Right. And… I can’t believe I’m asking this. Are you, I mean, do you happen to be a…” she looks him over again, like she’s trying to pre-empt his answer and can’t work out what she’s seeing. “Are you a detective?”

Right. That’s a clear sign if he’s ever seen one. He draws himself up because, this? This he can do.

“Do you know, I just so happen to be exactly that?” he asks, rhetorically. “I’m a _holistic_ detective. Holistic here referring to my belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, which I utilise when solving cases. Which I solve regularly and… with an as yet unascertained degree of success. That _is_ what you’re here for, isn’t it? You have a case for me?” he certainly hopes so at least, he’s not prepared to deal with anything else.

“I… Yes. No. Not technically I…” she tilts her head, eyebrows drawn together as she rests her hands on her hips. “My name is Farah Black. I was asked to find you by someone who has a case for you, and he would prefer it if this could all remain discreet.” He doesn’t tell her discreet isn’t something he’s good at, the look on her face shows she can tell.

“Does this client have a name?” he asks instead, and it would be more polite at this point to ask her to come in, but he doesn’t feel like it would be a good idea.

“He asked me to give you this when I found you,” she holds out an envelope with his name written on it. It’s unnerving, to say the least, but despite that he can feel that this is important, that this is _supposed_ to be something he takes on. Even so this isn’t exactly an ordinary circumstance and he takes the envelope from her slowly.

“Don’t be late,” she advises, “and…” she looks around as if making sure she won’t be overheard. “You might want to prepare yourself for something a little… strange.”

His eyes light up at that, trying to keep the smile off of his face. “Thank you, Farah. I can assure you that strange won’t be a problem.”

She nods, seemingly satisfied with this.

“Then I suppose I’ll leave you to it.” It’s an awkward end to their conversation, but Dirk doesn’t mind, he’s already excited about the mystery.

“It was nice to meet you Farah!” he calls after her as she leaves, getting a small wave in response and grinning to himself as he shuts the door, tearing open the envelope once he’s sure he’s locked it behind him.

There’s a time and a place, an instruction to not be suspicious, and the whole thing is signed off with a name he’s not at all familiar with.

Patrick Spring.

It gives him a good feeling.

 

***

 

Farah’s warning turns out to be relevant, because the meeting with Patrick Spring is indeed strange.

They meet up in a diner, where Dirk orders a cup of tea until Patrick says food is on him and he proceeds to order the largest stack of pancakes they have on the menu and a milkshake to top it off. He finishes in record time, like he hasn’t eaten a full proper meal in weeks (because he hasn’t), and Patrick watches him inhale the stack with a mixture of concern, awe, and disgust playing across his face. It doesn’t put Dirk off at all.

When they finally get round to the details of the case things get even more interesting, and he seems equally concerned by Dirk’s inability to keep his excitement in check. Patrick tells him he’s going to die, tells him he already knows when and where, and that he’d like him to investigate. When Dirk asks exactly _what_ he’d like him to investigate he just gets levelled with a serious stare that tells him the answer should be obvious. He pretends it is.

Patrick isn’t very forthcoming with the details, about anything. Dirk asks a lot of questions, but gets very few answers, and realises quite quickly that this is going to be one of those cases where he has to work out what the case even is before he can begin to solve it. He can’t bring himself to complain though, not when he’s so desperate for this call back to America to have been for a reason, and especially not when they get to the topic of payment.

Dirk has never been offered so much money for anything in his life.

He’d done his research of course, had known Patrick had a truly astonishing amount of money and assets, but somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that it meant he’d be paid so well. He accepts the proffered cheque and tries to look like it’s not the biggest payment he’s ever received, probably fails when he’s told that he’ll get the other half ( _there’s another half_ ) when the case is over, and nearly passes out when Patrick slides him a credit card and tells him it’s for case related expenses.

What exactly is considered case related is never clarified, and Dirk considers that a loophole that he’s happy to take advantage of.

This becomes abundantly clear the moment he finishes up in the diner and immediately goes shopping. Six hours, a rented car, a hotel room, an astonishing amount of room service, more ties than one man needs and an entire rainbow of jackets later, and Dirk can say without a doubt that he has a _good_ feeling about this case.

He’s not sure how long that feeling will last, but at least, for now, he feels like he can breathe.

 

***

 

The feeling doesn’t last. 

These days he tends to welcome cases because they mean distraction. As long as he’s focused entirely on the case at hand he doesn’t have to worry about any of his own issues, which isn’t great but as far as coping methods go it isn’t the worst he’s ever tried. Cases give him purpose, reason, meaning. When he works them he feels more grounded, more like a person, like his choices of name and profession actually mean something. They make him feel closer to being whole.

The problem is that there’s nothing distracting about this case, because it’s been nearly six weeks and _nothing_ has happened.

That, he supposes, is the problem with working a case before the crime in question has even been committed. He has nothing to go off. Even if he doesn’t do things the traditional way it would be _nice_ to have a crime scene, or at least a murder victim, but instead there’s nothing. Even when he tries to follow up on anything it turns out to be nothing. It’s starting to drive him a little bit insane.

Patrick is very hands off. He gets a message every few days reminding him to be ready, making sure he hasn't skipped town he supposes, but that’s it. He doesn’t seem concerned about the lack of leads or progress he’s making, he seems even less concerned that he’s paying so much money for Dirk to do _nothing_. One time he says it’s payment for future inconvenience and Dirk doesn’t even know where to begin with that, although to be fair even though Patrick clearly deemed Dirk weird he wasn’t what one would call ordinary himself. Dirk thinks he might get somewhere if he talked to Patrick more, but as it is he doesn’t get the chance and instead spends a lot of his time milling around his hotel room. Alone.

The space is clean and comfortable, but impersonal and devoid of life. He’s been here for weeks now and he hasn’t unpacked, if only because he knows there’s every chance he’ll be picked up and dragged somewhere else without warning, and he’s lost far too many possessions to not being prepared. He has some _very_ nice things now that he wants to keep hold of if he can.

The room feels big to him though, it feels endless sometimes. Swathes of neutral colours and fluffy white bedding and the way his voice bounces off the walls when he talks to himself like he always does, in the presence of others or not, because he’s gotten used to being his own friendly voice, sometimes the only one he’ll hear for a long time. The loneliness had been smothered by the excitement of a new case, but he can feel it creeping back in now. It threatens to choke him.

It’s good that Patrick stays distant, he thinks. The last thing he needs is to get attached like he always does only to be left again one way or another. It’s a habit he desperately needs to break if he’s going to survive like this on his own.

If he _can_ survive like this on his own.

He’s starting to have his doubts.

Late one night when the empty loneliness that hollows out his chest threatens to swallow him whole, he buries his face into the pillow and whispers a suggestion to the universe, because he knows better than to ask, that it wouldn’t be so bad to have someone to do this with. That if it would just give him one person who could care for him, who could love him, he wouldn’t find it all so difficult to handle.

Then Lydia Spring goes missing, and things really start to pick up.

 

***

 

When it happens, Dirk Gently remembers it like this.

Patrick sends him a message with instructions to come to The Perryman Grand Hotel and make his way to the penthouse suite when he calls him up. Things feel like they’re urging him to move, so he packs up his few belongings and goes to check in. It seems sensible to be there already, he thinks it’s much less likely to make him late.

He has no idea what time the call is due, so he sits and waits.

Dirk can’t settle, there’s no ignoring the push and pull he knows so well in his stomach, especially when something about this feels different to the others in a way he can’t _quite_ put his finger on. It worries him a little, he’s only had a few like this before and they’d all been life changing in ways he’s not too keen to repeat. The universe insists though, and he knows all too well how easily it can drag him.

Eventually he manages to fall asleep, because he’s starting to get tired in spite of the ocean in his stomach and if Patrick needs him for something big then it would be better to be well rested. He thinks about going to sleep and it happens, and the next thing he knows he’s blinking himself awake to the sound of a ringing phone.

He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to have his world turned on its head.

“Yes, I was awake. I’ve been awake,” it takes a moment to blink himself back to life, confused as to where he is for a moment before Patrick speaks and it all comes back to him.

“Where are you? It’s time.” Ominous, he notes as he wills his brain to catch up.

“I’m…” oh. Oh god. He’s late. Really he should have seen this coming, his time management skills have never been the best but he really would have appreciated them showing up for the one time he has a client who is overpaying him by an insane amount and didn’t even complain about his personal shopping spree. He scrambles to get up, more than relieved that he’s still dressed and actually in the hotel already. “I’m on my way is where I am and almost there already so everything’s great!” The lie comes out easily enough but it’s obvious, it must be so obvious, because he can feel the panic in his chest because god he’s so _late_. Patrick hangs up on him without calling him on the lie and Dirk throws himself off the bed. He reaches for his yellow jacket where it’s lying on the chair but hesitates before something pulls him towards the comfort of his black hoodie. He doesn't have time to debate the choice, zipping it up as he lets the door shut behind him and running off to take the step two at a time in his rush.

He’s just turning the corner at the top of the last flight of stairs and cursing himself for not thinking to take the elevator when he’s pulled up short by… well he’s not sure. There’s a person dressed as some kind of knight unless it’s simply a functioning suit of armour, a man with a fantastic jacket and a gorilla mask covering his face, and a smaller man wearing a ridiculously fluffy coat and sporting a black eye who’s looking at him both like he knows him and with a level of confusion that almost makes it seem as if he’s done something to offend him just by existing.

It’s safe to say this isn’t at all what he’d been expecting.

The smaller man says “Dirk?” like he can’t believe it’s him, and Dirk can’t work out why he’d be so disbelieving when he doesn’t even know who he is and, how does this man know his name? What are they doing here? Are they related to the case? Have they met before? The man certainly seems to know him but Dirk has no idea who he is, is he suffering from memory loss?  

He opens his mouth but he doesn’t have chance to ask anything before the man in the gorilla mask says “Oh! Right!” in a way that sounds strangely familiar before he takes him by the shoulders and shoves him up against the wall. Dirk isn't too phased by this, it tends to happen a lot, but not often with strangers before he’s even said anything, not that he knows what to say anyway.

Then the man takes off his mask and Dirk is left staring at himself and he has even less of an idea.

He’s seen a lot of bizarre things, but this has to be one of the strangest, because that’s _him_. That’s definitely him. Has he been cloned? Does he have a secret twin? Why doesn’t he, the _other_ he, seem phased by any of this? Why is he with these strange people? What have they got to do with anything? Did the other him know he was going to be here? Did the universe take his request for another person to some kind of strange extreme and just create another _him_? Is having two of him roaming the earth a good idea? Is this an alternate universe? Did he fall through a wormhole? Has he woken up in an alternate dimension?

He has _so many questions_ but the only thing he can work up the brain power to say is “what’s happening?” which, to be fair to him, is a rather comprehensive question.

“It’s a mess up there, but we’re going to figure it out!” the other him seems _very_ excited by this, gesturing between them wildly. Because it’s him talking, _talking to himself_ , it brings a level of comprehension to the situation even if it isn’t an answer, because other Dirk is talking like he knows how the rest of this goes, and Dirk knows he isn’t psychic, so it can only really mean one thing. This is the future. Or… other him is from the future? The hotel is a paradox? The wormhole theory is holding at least and he settles for a vague understanding of the situation for now because he knows himself well enough to realise he’s not going to get a clearer answer at this time even if his head is still spinning.

Interestingly the man in the fur coat is staring at him like he’s grown a second head, and really given the current situation it’s not that far off the truth. He can’t help it though, the man knows him and Dirk wants to know how. “Who’s that?” he asks, not the most productive question but clearly the right one because the next words out of his future self’s mouth feel like an earthquake.

“That’s your best friend, hopefully he’ll forgive us for this.”

A best friend. He says it so reverently and happily and excitedly and god… a _best friend_ … he doesn’t have time to process this. It feels like a waste of time just to be stuck on it but… he looks to the man ( _his best friend_ ) in awe? Shock? Amazement? It’s not like he’d expected any kind of friend at all, let alone a best one, but apparently he’s going to get one and… this is him. He’s right there. Dirk could reach out and touch him if he wanted to, although he thinks the other man might not like that very much at all if the look on his face is anything to go by. Dirk doesn’t even know his name but he already thinks he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

The look only lasts a split second because he looks as lost as Dirk feels right now ( _they’re going to get along so well_ ) and his future self seems to be the only one who has any idea what’s going on.

“Listen to me,” he says, pulling his attention and it seems important so he does. “He’s at the Ridgely building,” everything is so hard to process, his head is spinning with the impossible situation he’s found himself in and the sudden influx of new information after weeks of nothingness.

“Uh, the Ridgely,” he nods because okay, good, that’s simple enough to remember. “What’s that guy over there?” Dirk can’t help himself when he catches sight of the... man? _Knight_? Where would a guy like that even come from? Why would he be in a hotel? He just wants to know what’s going on. Maybe sit down, have a cup of tea. It’s all so fast.

“No time to explain! Three questions, one answer. You understand?” future him is very insistent about this and Dirk supposes it’s alright for him when he knows what’s going on. “Do you?” he’s clearly rushed as well, but Dirk thinks future Dirk is putting a lot of faith in him when he’s already been in this position and knows full well he doesn’t.

“Um…” is all he can offer because he doesn’t want to lie and he hasn’t got the words to make it convincing anyway. Is this what talking to him is always like? No wonder people seem to be constantly bewildered when he talks, his whole head feels like a washing machine running a spin cycle.

“Ah, there’s no time! Get the kitten! We forgot it! Go. Run. Don’t let them see your face!” Kitten? Kitten. Get the kitten, he can do that. The other him is clearly in a rush and Dirk suddenly finds a moment to wonder what he’s so eager to get away from, considering he’s just come from the place Dirk is heading to. The thought goes as quickly as it comes because then his future self is pushing the mask and a door key into his hands and he has to fumble not to drop them. He still doesn’t have any idea what’s going on but clearly something needs to be done and he needs to be the one to do it, so he steels himself because future him is right there so at least this part has to go okay.

“Okay I’m… I’m going to do _something_. Right… now!” he’s just going with it, because that’s what he does, and future him seems delighted like that’s exactly what he wanted to hear, giving him a last thumbs up before Dirk turns and runs away.

It takes all of his willpower to not just sink to the floor after he’s turned the corner, but he’s running purely on adrenaline and confusion right now. The thrill of a case picking up always scares him but it fills him with something else too, some kind of determination, some kind of feeling like he’s actually alive.

A best friend.

He tucks that thought, warm and exciting, to the back of his mind. Right now he has a job to do.

Instead of dwelling on what just happened he puts the mask on, making his cautious way through the corridors to the penthouse he was supposed to meet Patrick at before everything got flipped on its head. The feeling of dread only increases as he gets closer, his stomach churning and he’s so close to hyperventilating in the confined space of the gorilla mask, his heart is racing and his mind is even faster but he knows behind these doors is the first answer he’s going to get.

His hands are shaking, palms sweaty as he fits the key card into the lock, pushing the door open when it lights up green and steps inside.

It’s chaos.

There’s blood everywhere. Bodies strewn around, half of the furniture is straight up destroyed and there are… bite marks? On the ceiling?

Dirk regrets that this isn’t the weirdest thing he’s ever seen. It’s not the bloodiest either, but the familiarity of being surrounded by death does nothing to soothe his nerves. Patrick is dead, he feels a sharp pang of _something_ when he sees the body because the man had been strange but he’d also been kind to him. Dirk hadn’t even found his daughter yet. He doesn’t have time to worry though, he’s standing in the middle of a crime scene and he needs to get out of there before someone finds him but there’s something else. Something important.

 _Mew_.

It’s a tiny sound, and he sees that the creature that made it is even tinier when he spots the kitten making its way across the carpet like it isn’t in the middle of a bloodbath. How did a kitten even get in here?

_Kitten. Get the kitten._

He scoops the bundle of fluff up into his arms, cradling it close to his chest as he backs out of the room. At least there was one thing in all of that mess that made sense.

He still has so many questions.  

The case, it would seem, has well and truly started.

 

***

 

Dirk is very glad for the kitten, because when he gets back to his room he sinks down to the floor with his back against the door and buries his face in its soft fur while it purrs away happily.

It’s keeping him sane.

He sits there for a long time, because the universe has stopped pulling at him and he’s really not sure what else to do so he mostly just tries to process everything. It’s a lot, and he doesn’t quite manage it, but he keeps circling back to the same two things: He has a best friend. He’s at the Ridgely.

It seems too good to be true, if he’s being honest with himself. Years and years of reaching out and getting nothing back have settled him into a life he only really knows how to live alone. Sometimes he doesn’t even reach out anymore, the fear of getting someone hurt by association gets to be too much when he’s seen it happen so often. He’s grown used to the idea that nobody wants to keep him around and he’s, well, he’s not okay with it but he’s made his peace with it as much as he can. It hurts too much to keep trying.

Yet he’d still dared to make the suggestion in the dead of night. Perhaps someone out there had been listening.

Perhaps there is a place for him to fit after all.

Dirk tries not to get his hopes up while he waits, getting some milk for the kitten when it starts to get antsy, pacing the length of the room and trying not to laugh or cry at the turn today has taken. It’s a lot. Too much, even. Eventually he ends up back on the floor.

At some point, hours later, he manages to get himself together enough to do something. He’s alone now, Patrick is dead, god knows where Farah is, there’s nobody to consult about the case. He’s just… doing it on his own. The only place he can really think to go is the Ridgely. Even just the thought of it makes him nervous, but it feels like the right place to go.

He’s all alone.

He has a friend in his future.

Maybe this is the part he’s been waiting for all these years, the part where his life really starts.

The stream of creation still threatens to drown him, but it’s like he’s been thrown a life jacket. He’s trying to keep his head above water, trying to find space to breathe past the will of the universe, to not let it mould him into its shape when he's fought so hard to make one for himself.

He’s made this space he occupies his own. He’s given it a name and he’s tried to be kind with it where other people have refused to be. He’s learned the hard way, and the harder way, and the worst ways he can possibly think of, but he’s never let it make him anything other than what he wants to be. What he is. Because he doesn’t belong to the universe. He doesn’t belong to the stream of creation. He doesn’t belong to Blackwing or to soldiers or to scientists. Dirk Gently belongs to himself, and it’s not just something worth fighting for it’s something worth living for. Something worth being. Something, he thinks, it would be quite nice to share with someone else. Like an assistant.

Like a best friend.

He is the hope that kept Svlad Cjelli believing that little birds with broken wings could one day be made to fly again, the kindness and compassion he’d wished to see in others.

He is the sun that Project Icarus dared to dream of from within four walls, the light and life he’d deemed it worth dying just to catch a glimpse of, the warmth of the first touch of sunrise and the brilliance of a sky painted rich and colourful by sunset.

He is uncertainty and fear and loneliness. He is bad memories and bad decisions and bad dreams. He is lost and tired and hurting.

But he is possibility and curiosity and chance. He is belief and faith and the constant strive to do something better, to be something better. He is gentleness and kindness and goodness.

He isn’t an orphan. He isn’t an experiment. He isn’t theirs.

He’s a detective.

He is enough.

He deserves this.

He packs his bag with the little he has, tosses in the mask and sets the kitten down carefully. For a long moment he debates over his clothes, looking at himself in the mirror before deciding to go with his well-loved yellow jacket, slipping on a tie because it seems appropriate for the circumstances, and looking put together always helps him pretend he’s doing better than he is.

He doesn't know anything about what happens next, all he knows is that he will finally, _finally_ , have someone to do it with, someone to call a friend.

All he knows is that he’s shown the universe who he is, and in this one tiny moment of truth, the universe has seen him as he is and deemed him worthy of love.

The night he walks into is dark and full of promise, the stars above are shining like they’re reflecting his own hope back at him. Like they know what’s waiting. Like they know it’ll make it all worth it.

Dirk Gently lets himself breathe in the universe around him, reaching out into the infinity only he can see, seeking out every last speck of light in the overwhelming nothingness of creation and drawing them close.

Dirk Gently walks down the street as nothing but himself. Through the darkened corner of a city he doesn’t know. Towards a future that is nothing but his own. Against a backdrop of emptiness, loneliness and fear he’s kept an ember of hope burning, waiting for the moment it will ignite.

He has himself. He has his freedom. He has a promise.

He's found a home inside his body, he's made a space for himself between stars.

And in the darkness that surrounds him, he shines.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So! Let me know what you think! I like getting words in return for these words but screaming will also suffice. I hope you like it, I'd ask you to be nice but I already know you're a lovely lot.
> 
> You can catch me at kieren-fucking-walker on tumblr if you want to yell at me/talk to me about Dirk Gently/talk over horrible angst and delight in the pain. I'm also more than happy to talk over my ideas surrounding this project if that's something that interests you.
> 
> As a final note, I am a trained but not practicing psychologist and I would like to say that if you are experiencing problems with abuse, trauma, mental health or any of the bad things mentioned in this fic please contact someone. Therapy is a wonderful tool, but even if you aren't quite there yet you can find a help/crisis line for your country at this page http://togetherweare-strong.tumblr.com/helpline and I am always happy to point you in the direction of services that can help.
> 
> There are going to be add-ons to this story, but what I've set out to do has been finished in this chapter. Thank you for coming on this journey with me, for reading and commenting and leaving kudos, it really does mean the world to me. 
> 
> If you're still wanting more, I'll see you in the additional fics I'm going to add in later. Otherwise I hope you enjoyed <3


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